Modelling the overlap of nucleation, growth and coarsening during precipitation

A modified version of the Kampmann and Wagner numerical precipitation model has been used to investigate the effect of interfacial energy, solute supersaturation, and diffusivity on the kinetics of precipitation in binary alloys. It is predicted that overlap occurs between nucleation and coarsening when the precipitate/matrix interfacial energy falls below a critical value or the supersaturation increases above a critical value. Changes in diffusivity have no effect on the overlap. These predictions have been used to produce a kinetic map showing the critical supersaturation at which nucleation and coarsening are predicted to overlap for different alloy systems. This has important implications in the interpretation of the results of kinetic experiments. © 2004 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.